This week sees the release of a new vinyl album on Farpoint Recordings, Sonic Hauntings in a Big House. The work is a limited edition of 250 copies, plus artist proofs.

The album emerged out of a practice-based PhD in Ireland, in which I investigated the archives of a historic house in Bray, County Wicklow, using immersive sound practices to investigate the complexities of the Big House in contemporary Irish culture. It is a companion work to a hauntological soundtrail The Ancestors, which officially opened earlier this year on the Killruddery estate, using the Echoes.xyz audio geolocation platform.

“Here its houseness is built from fictions rather than stone…Thus I hear the elegiac moments of Young’s album not as an end to the big house’s history but as the celebration of the end of its singular narration” Salomé Voegelin, The Big House Made Of Sound (2024)

Sound artist Joseph Young releases his debut album ‘Sonic Hauntings in a Big House’ on the 5th December through Farpoint Recordings. A specialist in the binaural field recording technique, Young’s recent artistic practice focuses on aspects of sonic hauntology as it relates to the heritage space. The album structure of ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’, carefully arranged across two sides of vinyl represents the domestic and the external, and presents the listener with an elegiac soundtrack which subtly deconstructs the immutable layers of power and privilege, as it reverberates throughout its imaginary halls.

The vinyl album comes with inner sleeve and a 4 page pamphlet featuring the special commissioned essay ‘The Big House Made Of Sound’ by writer Salomé Voegelin. The Digital Album features an extra track not on the vinyl LP.

You can buy the album on the Farpoint Recordings Bandcamp (vinyl / digital versions) here.